Jumpship yards and resource shortages
world underground resources- major trillum, major hexacarbide
TL biotech
pop 8.7 efficiency 27.2
I rushed the redesignation when another rogue empire? popped up adjacent to me.

importing csg, trillum, hexacarbide, autofacs.

shortages
trillum (extractor is producing more than exporting)
hexacarbide (foundry is producing more than it is exporting)
autofac will add second autofac when able.

When trade routes are initially established, it take a couple of ticks to build the local stockpile of imported goods. So, the first tick might get 1/3 of request imported, and zero used, followed by 1/2 imported and 1/3 used, then 3/4 imported and 1/2 used and so on, until eventually, between 1.1 and 3x the request is stored on the importing planet.

Thank you Starxplor. Timing was not the issue.
Apparently somewhere along the line every time I connected an autofac to export to the hub the program divided the export percentage on the trade route. These autofacs were not connected to anything but a single hub.
Exporting to 2 hubs the trade route divides in 2 to 50% for each as it should. I don't think it should be dividing the trade route percentages when you connect up 2 worlds to 1 hub.

The hub was running a negative numbers in consumer goods, but I had a lot of consumer autofacs connected. -When I checked one world it showed it was producing 40k -consuming 5k but only exporting 3k to the hub. Why wasn't the hub importing more?

Solution: The trade route when connected had been reducing the trade route percentages each autofac I connected. It was at 5% not 100%.

This is why I wish we could define a quantity, not just a percent of demand. The way it is now, if you do not manually set any percentages, the game [tries] to split the demand evenly, by percentage, among the supplying worlds. If you define the export percent of demand for one supplying world, the rest of the worlds split the rest of the percentage of demand.

Additionally, because of the percent of demand instead of quantity, increasing demand increases exports from all connected suppliers, throwing off ratios when a single supplier increases production and you have to manually set all the rates to take advantage of it.

Good luck though, I am basically calculating rates constantly to try to prevent starving consumers of various goods, and way over-producing food goods to avoid riots.

What if the call to transfer was based on production instead of demand? An autofac or foundary when connected would then be able to transfer 100% of available resource (or a user defined amount). I am guessing that would leave as the only variable - the rise and fall of production.

Resource Produced - consumption= available to transfer. Previously stored amounts would have to be moved by ship from planet to new location.

Not sure how complicated that is to code, but that would really really help some things. Say I want 15 worlds to import trillum from one world or 3, ctrl + left click = select, ctrl + right click = the same action but for all selected elements. If I want 10 fleets to change heading to a single world or 100 fleets scattered around my empire to fly to a world, ctrl + left click = select, ctrl + right click = go there... etc.

Group Designation

Any multi-fleet/multi-world selection has the option of being designated with a single "fleet name"/"constillation name". Clicking on one selects all then just apply the Multi select utilities where doing something to one applies to all and your gold.

The Jump beacon

Brilliant concept. I wonder if it can use a bit of tweaking now though.

1) It seems that the ability to capture a jump beacon and have it remain is reeking havoc across the galaxy. Perhaps the same limitation as capturing a sector capitol can be applied where it reverts to autonomous and loses it's ability to give access to jumpships. If a fleet is en route to a location, allow that fleet to continue to its destination, but not to jump any place except back to its own jump beacon areas. Another option is to disallow any attack command within an area that has no jump beacon but the the jump location is still "lit up", allowing for movement and evasion but not allowing attack.

2) A time frame for charging the jump beacon. Maybe 8 hrs? as this is usually the time frame that people sleep or work, this greatly hinders the ability to designate or redesignate any world into a jump beacon. Wouldn't it also make sense to need time for "acquiring jump space"?

3) An alternative or neat little quark jump beacons could posses is the ability to disengage the beacon but still act as an jumpship autofactory. This would allow the world to produce and send ships back to some place, while not being subject to needing to defenses or the player to be worried they will be invaded. Granted, if the jump beacon loses its connection when captured, then it doesn't require this alternative and vice-a-verse.

4) One option is to give all worlds the ability to have jump beacons, whether they are producing anything or not, but use a combination of #3 and #4. This would give every world owned by the empire the ability for jumpship movement, have a charging time of 8 hrs (or whatever time length), lose the jump beacon when captured.

The Citadel

Good idea, bad bad bad implementation at the moment.

I think this is one of those things that sounds good on paper, but in reality are a bad idea.

Current limitations:
Player must be active to use.
Not enough effective missiles to stop incoming fleets.
Auto-fire does little effective damage to when an attacker is landing troops on a defenders world, and creates a situation where (if the defender returns in time) finds that he has no more jumpmissiles because they were auto-fired ineffectively.
Ineffective at stopping invasions.

Current good use:
Decent range.
If the defender has enough jumpmissiles and citadels then it is possible to fight off medium sized attack fleets or small pirate fleets from small empires.
Make for a good visual deterrent.
A little annoying bug was fixed that meant parking a fleet on the Citadel disabled the ability to fire.... (I lost an empire because of that).
Not able to fire missiles without being in range of a capital.
Being able to be captured and fired although the world has whatever designation. If it has jumpmissiles, they are viable.

Possible fixes:
1) High SPLASH DAMAGE from debris, those ships are traveling at +light speed, I feel like a missile blowing up a ship in front of the fleet would be slightly detrimental to the fleet as a whole.

2) Linking worlds via, or not something much more simple, than Group Designation allows for all Citadels within range to fire on the incoming fleet.

3) Create a Hyper-Citadel that is way over powered, meaning 1,000 missiles takes out a fleet of 1 Million, but instead of having an circle the Citadel only has 90 degrees of firing range to work with, that way, if some one does manage to build several of them it requires some type of forethought. The only problem with that that I can see is the coding would be annoying because you should include the ability to direct the firing vector and find some fancy bit of math for the vector arc. A build time for these would be a good idea I think, since they are over powered and could possible be really annoying to attack.

From here down I become quite opinionated... I am passionate about proper control and communication so... this part of the game I have strong feelings about because growing up direct control of the pieces was how we played. HOWEVER, if the way the A.I. and battle controls are designed is to give us a feel for "fog of war" and "communication disruption" in battle.... that would be cool, but I think that would really need to be directly explained, even if it is just a made up excuse, I can accept that haha.

Battle A.I

Good job including any at all. Just, absolutely fantastic that you know how to do that.

Current Disadvantages:
A.I.:
If you select to attack a world the A.I. takes over and has no strategic ability whatsoever. Adamants out range GDM's, but will fly down into their range and get blown up.
Wings attack only ONE designated wing, even though they are dying by something they could destroy in one shot, they will wait until their designated wing is in range to attack, even if that means no one makes it. You can lose a winnable battle by leaving it up to the A.I.
Auto quit? There is something going on where if my forces do not have fleets to invade the world I cannot attack the world! or if my space forces are not strong enough by the number alone the A.I. will auto quit the battle even though I could have won.
Controls:
The controls are hit and miss, maybe this is just my computer. The thing is, I'm smarter than the A.I. and a control freak, I like to be in the thick of the action. They fleet commander's communications need to be upgraded........... sorry.. If there are buttons to give control to the player I think those buttons should work or not exist at all.

Possible fixes:
I believe that control of the battle should trump the A.I. function, orders from the player are followed no matter what the A.I. says.

A.I.
I think that the planetary defenses should target the nearest object, while the wings should fire at whatever is shooting them, if targeted by multiple forces, the wing fires at the nearest target unless designated otherwise.
There should be no Auto-quit. If someone wants to suicide their fleets... let them? There are a lot of advantages to just offing your own fleets.

Controls:
I personally don't like the button's at all and would prefer to have direct control by left clicking on the individual little wings orbiting the planet, like clicking the triangles out in the galaxy, and then right clicking the thing I want it to attack. Also the orbit could be designated with another ctrl+click or alt+click if you rather. Holding down those down could return the orbit ring and releasing could set the designation.
There could be controls for using planetary defenses. If one entire hemisphere of 150K hypersonic missiles are targeting one wing... invasion over. Maybe.. W+left click on defense and right click on wing that needs to be shot down. This alone would boost planetary defense capabilities exponentially.

There is a lot more and better suggestions, but I can't think of any right at the moment so I will leave it at that for now.

Possible fixes:
1) High SPLASH DAMAGE from debris, those ships are traveling at +light speed, I feel like a missile blowing up a ship in front of the fleet would be slightly detrimental to the fleet as a whole.

Right now each jumpmissile actually generates I think 16 separate projectiles, so there are more projectiles than there appear to be. They don't do AoE damage, which some missiles do (like Starcruiser missiles) but AoE damage seems to be bugged anyway. Any given projectile seems to have a fairly low chance of destroying ship even with many projectiles, so it's not an ideal solution.

My idea for citadels is to implement standing orders. I agree that allowing all citadels in range to fire is a good idea rather than just one firing in response to any given attack.

A.I.
I think that the planetary defenses should target the nearest object, while the wings should fire at whatever is shooting them, if targeted by multiple forces, the wing fires at the nearest target unless designated otherwise.
There should be no Auto-quit. If someone wants to suicide their fleets... let them? There are a lot of advantages to just offing your own fleets.

I concur. Supposedly there was "opportunity fire" in Alpha 4 so that fleets and defenses wouldn't just pick one target and not fire at anything else when it was out of range. It doesn't seem to exist in later betas and Era 3, though...

Controls:
I personally don't like the button's at all and would prefer to have direct control by left clicking on the individual little wings orbiting the planet, like clicking the triangles out in the galaxy, and then right clicking the thing I want it to attack. Also the orbit could be designated with another ctrl+click or alt+click if you rather. Holding down those down could return the orbit ring and releasing could set the designation.
There could be controls for using planetary defenses. If one entire hemisphere of 150K hypersonic missiles are targeting one wing... invasion over. Maybe.. W+left click on defense and right click on wing that needs to be shot down. This alone would boost planetary defense capabilities exponentially.

Controls are an issue that don't get discussed enough. Many parts of the game could stand to get overhauled controls.

Controls are an issue that don't get discussed enough. Many parts of the game could stand to get overhauled controls.

I think the idea of standing orders would be a good addition to the game, however, if you create standing orders for one aspect, people will want it for a lot of others, such as fleet maneuvers. I do think that a good first run though would be, "If enemy in range, fire" .

To an extent there is an order for "if world is being attacked.... " and the citadels in range of the attacked world will all fire. But like I said and anyone who has experienced them in combat knows, they are useless.... which sucks, because they have the opportunity to be formidable.

I hesitate a little though, because, idk about anyone else, but I've never seen what George had in mind for an end result of this game. We may want to remake the game into something he never desired to make....

In this era planetary defenses got buffed, but it's actually HARDER to defend worlds, mainly because ships got stronger too. Undines now have 20 range, which means cannon-type defenses can't even touch them. They fall to hypersonics, but worlds defended entirely by those can't fight back against eldritches, so planets have to go for a mix, which means in a given fight, a significant percentage of the defenses do NOTHING. Plasma towers don't have the range problem, but don't feel like a good option because while hexacarbide is plentiful, chronimium is not, and I'm not even sure if it's worth it to divert it from shipbuilding to static defenses. In the previous era at least starfrigates are really strong, but not anymore. Gunships, on the other hand, got buffed, so the balance tipped even more in the attacker's favor.

Citadels seem pretty weak, especially since it requires the player to be present in order to do anything, and even then it doesn't feel like they do enough. I think jumpmissiles shouldn't be consumable. One idea is to have citadels build this special type of planetary defense that can fire renewable jumpmissiles (like hypersonics vs GDM) across interstellar space. If a planet within the citadel's radius comes under attack, the batteries will shoot the attacker. This way, the citadel can function without a player's attention, and an enemy can't bait out the consumable missiles with explorers if automatic firing is implemented. I think a citadel should have the value of at least a shipyard in terms of contributing to an empire's total combat power, otherwise there would be no point in designating them.

In this era planetary defenses got buffed, but it's actually HARDER to defend worlds, mainly because ships got stronger too. Undines now have 20 range, which means cannon-type defenses Citadels seem pretty weak, especially since it requires the player to be present in order to do anything, and even then it doesn't feel like they do enough. I think jumpmissiles shouldn't be consumable. One idea is to have citadels build this special type of planetary defense that can fire renewable jumpmissiles (like hypersonics vs GDM) across interstellar space. If a planet within the citadel's radius comes under attack, the batteries will shoot the attacker. This way, the citadel can function without a player's attention, and an enemy can't bait out the consumable missiles with explorers if automatic firing is implemented. I think a citadel should have the value of at least a shipyard in terms of contributing to an empire's total combat power, otherwise there would be no point in designating them.

I'm 90% confident that citadel autofiring exists in the game right now, but:

firing doesn't generate a popup message on the citadel, so it's easy to overlook if you're the defender

I think only one citadel in range will fire one volley

autofire targets invasion attempts only (it will not fire against fleets performing the "Destroy Ships and Defenses" mission)

citadels can't fire if they are out of range of a sector capital, so if your wars typically involve a strong push to take a sector capital followed by mopping up everything else, you will only encounter autofire against your very first invasion, which probably involves an overwhelming force against which one citadel will have only minor effect.

There are some problems with autofire. If there are ships with missile defense in the invasion fleet, they can intercept some of the incoming missiles. Ships in orbit seem to take fewer casualties than fleets in transit; this may have something to do with projectile range, target assignment, some underlying problem with missiles, or some other unknown issue.

I think jumpmissiles shouldn't be consumable. One idea is to have citadels build this special type of planetary defense that can fire renewable jumpmissiles (like hypersonics vs GDM) across interstellar space. If a planet within the citadel's radius comes under attack, the batteries will shoot the attacker. This way, the citadel can function without a player's attention, and an enemy can't bait out the consumable missiles with explorers if automatic firing is implemented. I think a citadel should have the value of at least a shipyard in terms of contributing to an empire's total combat power, otherwise there would be no point in designating them.

I sort of like this idea. If there were an entire battery line of citadels the fight would need to be more spread out in a given battle and would be less of a pin point attack. In this scenario an attack or defense would contain multiple worlds depending on strategies used.

I've attempted to go for such kinds of attacks or forcing them, but game play seems to favor one large force. Multiple fleets are becoming more and more favorable though, which seems more realistic given the scope of the game we are playing. For me the fighting seems too localized for a galactic scale game, and if the citadels were working as we think they aught then the fight would have to be more spread out, perhaps.

I ask the creation of the button "ALL" when you have to deploy, transfer, buy ecc.. it is a nonsense you have to buy fleets from Mesophon 1000 by 1000

I thought about it, and the only reason I could come up with is that the mesophone can act like a wormhole... and buying 1000 at a time discourages the use of it as such. That would be a crazy game if we can use it like that.

I dare say the best way to use the Trade Hubs is in a limited manner. We always assumed they can be made to supply an entire Sector with ease, this may not be the case and it certainly is not the case with the mechanics we have at the moment.

How well do the Trade Hubs work if connected in a chain like the Mesophone?

Their is a new bug that was brought to my attention by Aura ( TBK ) in my Q empire. The planet Q G 4400 which is the designation of a trillium ore mine, has not only changed to a starship yard...it also located in section of space that can not produce starships????? To view this marvel you will see 3 fleets orbiting said planet. Starship can't travel in this part of space and should not be able to be manufacture either?!?!?